Moonlighting
by Batty Catty Pumpkin Pie
Summary: When the story is set in the 21st century, Muto Yugi's life goes a little differently. Not the story for you if you have a problem with yaoi or ASMR. Eventual Puzzleshipping, Rivalshipping.


_Prologue._

If I hadn't formed a chronic case of insomnia in sixth grade, I doubt any of it would ever have happened the way it did.

That is a weird way to begin a story. I'm a weird person.

So I was this nerdy little dork, and I'd just started gelling my hair into spikes and dyeing it because I thought it looked cool. Nothing changed, I was still a dork, but it had been wishful thinking. I was a tiny little person in clothes that made me look like a post with hunched shoulders, and I had spiked tri-colored hair that framed an albino-tomato sort of facial structure. I looked awful. And the hair just made it look worse.

But I didn't really have any friends except for this girl named Anzu, and I didn't get very good grades, and I was kind of shy, and there was nothing really exceptional about me. I was obsessed with gaming; that was about it. And I thought I needed something for me, to mark me out as special.

I was in that weird in-between place where I wasn't in a big enough and old enough forum to get the crap beaten out of me by bullies yet, but I was kind of on my way there. I was a pushover, really gentle and emotional and easy to get to; I always had been. People steamrolled right over me.

But I had this weird week in sixth grade where I had a really chronic case of insomnia. And I was usually this really cheerful, sunny person - Anzu called me "full of kind wisdom," which even then I thought sounded like a gigantic pile of bullshit - but insomnia eats away at that part of you like nothing else. After about the third day where I came to class all red-eyed, droopy, and exhausted, with shadows under my eyes, Anzu asked me in concern what was wrong.

"Oh, I just haven't been sleeping well lately," I said, a little depressed from the sheer, remarkable level of tired I had arrived at. I was kind of hunched over with my backpack. We were standing outside the classroom, waiting to be let in for the morning.

"Oh, Yugi!" Anzu brightened. "You should try ASMR!"

I squinted at her, as if blinded by the sheer force of her perkiness. Anzu is the best, fiercest, and most protective friend ever, but try not sleeping for a week and then ask her to give you a friendship speech and you'll see what I mean.

"What's that?" I asked slowly and dumbly, in a kind of haze.

So during lunch, Anzu showed me. She gave me her headphones and her smartphone and set it to an ASMR video. I was curious, because I'd mostly just been using my phone to play app games. A woman appeared on the screen, and she began making tapping noises and talking in soothing whispers, and then I woke up at home.

Dazed, I wandered downstairs. My family lived in the flat above my grandfather's game shop, which was all glass cases full of rare, unusual, and exotic games and puzzles. "Did… did I go to school today, or did I dream all that?" I wondered, blinking.

"Yes, you went to school. You fell asleep at lunch over Anzu's video and the teacher called me and had me come pick you up in my car," said Grandpa, amused.

"Oh. Thank God I found something, I was about to use the Sennen Puzzle's one magical wish on a good night's sleep," I said frankly.

"Still on that Puzzle, are you, Yugi?" said my Grandpa slyly. "You know, the Sennen Puzzle is far too hard for you, and -"

"Not listening to it," I said flatly, walking away back up the stairs.

"It's an Ancient Egyptian artefact! Think of the price it would bring!" my grandfather called in vain up the stairs.

"You're not selling something I've already been working four years on!" I called back over my shoulder. "And I'm going to use to remember you by! Fondly! When you're dead! And I still have it!"

I shut my bedroom door.

The Sennen Puzzle was an Ancient Egyptian puzzle my grandfather had taken from the tomb of a teenage unknown Pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings, back when archaeologists were still allowed to keep some of what they found. My grandfather had sent the broken puzzle to some of the greatest minds of the age, only stipulating that they couldn't use a computer to solve it. Not one had. My grandfather took the Puzzle back, and I found it way on the back of a game shop shelf one day when I was seven and set to solving it.

And I would continue to try solving it - right through into high school. That was the kind of tenacity I had when it came to gaming, and it was the same kind of tenacity I would form when it came to ASMR.

I became increasingly addicted to ASMR over the course of the next several weeks. I began listening to it every night, or whenever I needed to relax. I noticed something immediately - though ASMR was mainly populated by women, men had ASMR channels too.

I knew what I wanted to do, but it took me a while to actually work up the nerve to do it. As I moved into seventh and eighth grades and became a teenager, the idea grew itself in my mind. I wanted my own ASMR channel.

As far as I could tell, I would need a few things. I would need a new look - Anzu could help me with that. But then I would need money, to take classes in massage and hypnosis and to buy myself the necessary audio, camera, and background equipment. What could I do to get money that was open to a middle schooler? Next I would need a proper username to put my channel under. What was I to be called?

* * *

Anzu took me shopping. "You have to go for the whole pretty-boy thing," she mandated. "You can't look like you do now."

First thing was first - the spikes had to go.

I watched as the gel was washed out of my hair, then the dye after it. I ended up getting a haircut that made my smooth, straight black hair fall to about eye-line. Then Anzu bought me new clothes - slim fit tees, tank tops, and jeans in black, blue, purple, and dark green colors. A chain and some converse finished the outfit off. I looked smaller and more delicate, but that was the idea, and I didn't look like a post anymore.

"There," she said in satisfaction. "It's modest and down to earth, yet cool and urban. It's perfect."

For money, I ended up working as an assistant at local hospitals and animal shelters. It gave me some practice with being gentle, calm, and self confident around other living things, which I actually found very rewarding, and it gave me the money I needed to buy myself video making equipment, as well as massage and hypnosis classes.

The massage and hypnosis classes were really where my self confidence grew. Despite my fears, there were plenty of men in the class, and here my gentle nature was of actual benefit. I also had to be self confident, or I would project the wrong kind of aura (not to mention feel stupid) during the class exercises.

A new persona formed off the job, a kind of shell - calm yet sarcastic.

Interested in healing, I then went on to take classes in herbal tinctures and homeopathic remedies. I formed a love for herbal tea, and a dedication to someday be a doctor. My math and science grades shot up, and I started taking on-campus after-school first aid and CPR classes.

I confided my new goal to Anzu. "I want to be a ballerina in New York," she admitted, beaming. She was a pretty girl with short, sensible chocolate brown hair and long, graceful legs. "A ballerina and a doctor. Pretty odd, huh?"

"I like it." I smiled. "Prima Ballerina from Japan Anzu Mazaki, and Dr Muto of Japan's Domino City Hospital."

Then it was time for the technical aspects of the ASMR channel. I'd been watching the videos for years and thought I knew what to do, had the necessary equipment, but there were still two things left. Choosing a background and studio, and a username.

For my "studio," Grandpa let me use a back room in the game shop. It had no windows, which made setting up lighting, camera, and audio perfect. I'd formed a love for not only gaming but electronic music, so I decided to go for the whole techno theme with my studio. It was all black wood and metal, the mics and accents glowing a soft blue. Anzu helped me pick out the decorations for my ASMR room, too. She was very supportive from the beginning.

But what to call my channel? Eventually, I chose a play on words: I called it Moonlighting ASMR, both because of the idea of soothing moonlight and because I was a student on top of working the channel. My profile picture was an image of a cute little robot.

And then I made my first videos and set to work. I was really nervous at first, but for the most part the reviews were positive. I found I had a natural knack for gentle kindness and soft words, and paired with calm and confidence, that became my strength. I took people through self hypnosis, gave Anzu or occasionally my mother massages for the camera, mimed homeopathic spa treatments and get-well concerned tea brewing videos. I did some occasional video game roleplay, mostly as a medic. Sometimes I pretended at a doctor's office. It was all very official; it involved a lot of acting as well as an integration of the right tapping or crinkling sounds. I also did a lot of whispering and murmuring videos, talking about all the latest things going on in my life and joking, softly laughing, if the chaos of the game shop could sometimes be heard in the background.

I went from faux blogging in ASMR videos, to actual video blogging and then to keeping my own online written blog. I was finally inspired to write something. I started getting more Internet attention under the "Moonlighting" pseudonym, and my writing grades in school started going up alongside science and math, showing it had mostly been a matter of interest all along. I was even making money from my videos alongside my grandfather with his game shop and my mother with her janitor's job.

That was when my mother started accommodating and approving my "hobby." A practical and hard-headed woman who a tough life had made fierce, she didn't really understand the activity of ASMR until it started bringing in cash. Then she set aside time in each day for me to work on writing the scripts for or working on videos, actually reminding me to do my "work" if I happened to forget.

I also started reading other people's blogs, particularly political blogs, and imbibing more liberal notions. I became interested in feminism and gay rights, particularly when I came to the realization that I was bisexual myself.

It really hit me quite suddenly. I woke up one day and realized that all those things people talked about in all that political reading? I could identify with most of it. Most of it applied to me.

I ended up having a long two AM conversation with my mother, my grandfather, and Anzu. My mother said it made no difference, my grandfather teased me, and Anzu pledged to support me, saying she'd always wanted someone to talk guys with anyway. And she did talk to me about guys - a _lot_. Looking back, I think she was trying to get me comfortable with the idea of my sexuality, in her own way. Anzu was bold like that. I became dryly amused but very affectionate towards her.

I will admit I had a crush on Anzu when I was younger. But in the end, she wasn't my crush. She was my best friend. I'd been wishing on the Sennen Puzzle for years for a best friend - only to realize I'd had one all along. I had a best friend, as well as friends from my classes and extracurricular activities, I had an online fanbase, and I had a loving family.

I was blessed.

Instead, foolishly, I began to wish on the Sennen Puzzle's imaginary magic for romantic love. I would die before I admitted it to anyone, but I was at that point in one's teenage years when they always feel extremely alone. Man or woman, I wanted someone to fall in love with.

My father had left the family when I was very small. He was an extroverted, masculine man, a wealthy businessman whose surname I did not share, and I'd always felt I'd disappointed him somehow. When he saw me on my YouTube channel, he called me late one night - after years of radio silence - to yell at me. He didn't know I'd come out as bi, as only people who actually interacted with me knew about that, but he must have used the word "fag" at least three times. He called me a "shame."

I told him to go fuck himself and I hung up.

Before? What he said might have bothered me. By now I was too far gone to go back. If anyone didn't like me, they could just go straight to hell. I had a very definite sense of myself.

That was the point I'd arrived at in the real beginning of my story. The real beginning starts in high school.


End file.
